Hooper, whose nostrils quivered with repressed excitement, flung away his cigar and applied himself to the task of recording all external physical indications of the emotions his companion might be experiencing. It will be remembered that this trance-like condition was usually preceded by some slight disturbance of the blood-vessels infringing on or adjacent to the brain. There was no such sign of cerebral disorder on this occasion. Karl seemed to have yielded to a desire for a pleasant and refreshing doze. Again, when he saw Maggie Hutchinson and the Armenian at Manhattan Beach, he had endeavored to approach nearer to them, and was only prevented by the fortunate interposition of a window-ledge and a stick stuck in a flower-pot, while his temporary flight to the storm-tossed saloon of the _Merlin_ had caused him to sway in Hooper’s arms. To-night he sat immovable, though he witnessed a series of really remarkable events, the sight or hearing of which would assuredly have evoked some reflex action or cry during any of his earlier manifestations. Luckily, there was present, in the young American, a sympathetic watcher, who, notwithstanding his comparative youth, had all the coolness and critical acumen of a hardened investigator. Hooper, true to his own theory, was convinced that he was assisting in the development of a hitherto unsuspected function in man’s brain. He knew that the obscure sum of influences we call heredity affects the adult man in a surprisingly small traceable degree as compared with education. If it were possible to leave an infant, born of civilized parents, wholly to its own devices, what direct characteristics of human ancestry would it exhibit? It would possess no articulate language, its knowledge would not extend beyond the limited recognition of a few articles of food, its reasoning faculties would be a blank, its highly convoluted brain a storehouse of potentialities as hidden as the wonder of its nervous system or the chemical building of its tissue. In a word, a child which, under tuition, might become the discoverer of a new province in human thought, would sink instantly to the condition of palæolithic man. Let the key be lost which should unlock the treasury, and untold ages of horror and suffering, of seemingly endless and unavailing effort, must be endured ere it could be found again. Yet the treasure was there intact, as surely pent within the protoplasmic ovum as displayed in all its splendor on the printed page of the world-convincing treatise. That was the great miracle of nature, and Hooper asked himself what phase of her manifold powers was now unfolding itself before his intent yet uncomprehending eyes.